Is this the most glamorous ever Miss Havisham? The first pictures have emerged of Helena Bonham Carter in the role of the celebrated jiltee in the upcoming Great Expectations adaptation, directed by Mike Newell. At 45, Bonham Carter is by some distance the youngest actor to play Havisham in recent times – you have to go back to David Lean's 1946 adaptation to find a comparable figure, in the shape of then 46-year-old Martita Hunt.

Even though Havisham's age is not explicitly stated in Dickens' novel, did he have Bonham Carter's cobweb-laden crypto-goth look in mind for the mansion-dwelling recluse, as she holes up with only her rotting wedding cake and pliable niece Estella for company? Whatever else, Bonham Carter is not afraid to take on eccentric, maturer roles, what with Enid Blyton and Nigel Slater's stepmother for TV, voicing Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and Aardman's Lady Tottington, Bellatrix Lestrange, the Red Queen and Sweeney Todd's Mrs Lovett in the cinema. But is Miss Havisham as the Corpse Bride a step too far? What do you think?